How Caviar Is Made In The Swiss Alps
Caviar is the unfertilized eggs of fish, also known as roe. Caviar can come from several varieties of fish, but traditionally refers to fish eggs from wild sturgeon in the Caspian Sea. Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan, which border the Caspian sea, are the world's largest producers of caviar.
Sturgeon have been around since before the dinosaurs, but today they are threatened from overfishing. Sturgeon do not reproduce annually — it can take up to 20 years for the fish to mature so they can produce roe — which makes the species especially vulnerable to over-exploitation.
As a result, several species of sturgeon are now farmed.
The first Swiss caviar, "Oona," comes from farmed Siberian sturgeon that live in naturally warm mountain water in Frutigen, Switzerland.
The Tropenhaus farm was engineered by Peter Hufschmeid who came up with the idea to divert runoff water from a railway tunnel under the Bernese Alps.
The water is a warm 68 degrees, helping the sturgeon to develop more quickly than in frigid Russian waters.
The first Siberian sturgeons were introduced to Tropenhaus in 2005.
The complex has expanded to 60,000 fish to produce up to three tons of high-quality caviar each year and 18 tons of sturgeon meat.
The sturgeons are bred in large basins that are filtered. Sturgeons are caught in large nets after they are scanned with ultra-sound technology to see if the fish eggs are ready to be harvested.
Switzerland's only Caviar-Meister, Tobia Felix, does the entire process by hand.
First, the belly of the fish is sliced open.
The egg sac is then removed.
These fish eggs are black and will become glossy when salt is added.
The egg sac is rolled back and forth over a metal grate.
This process separates eggs of different sizes.
Tweezers are used to pick out any discolored eggs or impurities.
Caviar comes in different sizes and colors, which depend on the age of the fish and what it eats.
In the final stage, salt is added to the caviar.
Oona comes in four grades. The highest-quality grade contains eggs with a minimum grain size of 2.6 millimeters that are selected by hand. A 30-gram tin (a little more than one ounce) costs $232.
Oona rivals some of the most famous and sought-after caviars that come from three species of sturgeon — beluga, osertra, and sevruga. An ounce of caviar from beluga sturgeon can cost up to $285.
Whales are also prized for their meat.
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